How do wild rabbits cause enviromental damage?

Question

How do wild rabbits cause enviromental damage?

Answer 1

Rabbits cause environmental damage in a lot of ways. Firstly, rabbit warrens cause damage to the land itself.

Here are a couple of pic's of that:

http://www.dkimages.com/discover/preview...

http://www.cbit.uq.edu.au/biocontrol/ani...

Rabbits also compete with native animals for food, especially in times of drought. They can also cause plants to die out in certain areas due to the fact that they eat them right to ground level, unlike most other animals. Another thing they do is to eat a lot of seedlings of native plants, rather than just eating grass. When this happens in dry areas, it means that a lot fewer native shrubs etc. will grow there, because they don't germinate easily to start with.

Where I grew up, we had a lot of rabbits. Back then, myxomatosis (a virus which kills rabbits) was fairly common, but a lot of rabbits have become immune to it now. Then the calicivirus was introduced and a lot of people thought it would kill every rabbit in Australia, but of course that hasn't happened. It did kill a lot of them, though. Hopefully, some day they will actually find something that will kill all of them.

Answer 2

They will tear up Gardens like crazy but they are at the bottom rung of the food chain so they are food for many animals from foxes to hawks to humans.

I hunt them often and even my Wife will eat them. They are delicious!